Watch the film here.

Helsinki Plant Tram is a participatory project that includes an urban action on a tram which utilises the city’s local transport network and an imaginative urban garden built from plants donated by passengers.

The project has been commissioned by the British Council and has been designed and produced by London-based landscape practice Wayward Plants, in collaboration with the local environmental organisation, Dodo.

The Plant Tram Urban Action takes passengers on a journey to celebrate urban growing in Helsinki and to strengthen the network of growing spaces throughout the city. In partnership with Culture Tram and their mobile exhibition and performance platform, the Urban Action utilises the local tram network to create a mobile garden that journeys through the city of Helsinki to pick up passengers bringing donated plants. Potential growing spaces are mapped out along the route, strengthening the network of growing spaces in Helsinki.

The Plant Tram Urban Garden is an imaginative timber structure filled with plants which is envisioned as a “magical tram journey.” The structure weaves through the site like flying tram tracks with its design inspired by the iconic wooden roller coaster found at the Linnanmäki Amusement Park, which opened in Helsinki for the 1952 Olympics. The timber for the structure was recycled from Wastelands XXXII European Students Assembly, taking place at the Suvilahti site a few weeks prior to the construction of the garden.

Twenty large mobile planters provide seating and fruit tree planting for a mobile orchard beside the large structure. A shipping container is also converted into a temporary tram station next to the garden, filled with maps detailing the journeys that the plants have travelled and documenting the participatory nature of the Everyday Discoveries exhibition project – at the end of which the garden will be reconfigured to create a lasting legacy as a permanent urban garden at Suvilahti for Dodo.